Most current research in Component-Based Systems Engineering (CBSE) focuses on design and integration processes. There is little interest in the requirements engineering and product evaluation/selection processes that must precede design and integration. Also most current methods and tools support systems design and integration but neglect the requirements engineering and product evaluation/selection processes. However, in spite of this lack of focus on requirements engineering, a consensus seems to be emerging that the CBSE development process should be an iterative one of requirements engineering, systems design, product evaluation/selection and systems integration. This paper proposes a new method, PORE, to address the lack of requirements engineering methods and product evaluation/selection process guidance for the CBSE process. The paper ends with a `vision' for future research directions for component-based systems engineering development process. Keywords: PORE, systems procur...

Tools for managing systems requirements help keeping specifications consistent, up-to-date and accessible. Since the requirements for complex systems are themselves complex information structures that must be handled in complex process scenarios, there are many strong requirements concerning a tool for managing them. This paper presents a requirements catalog for requirements management tools that is based on substantial project experience (including tool evaluation experiences) in the area of automotive as well as aircraft and defense systems. The purpose of this catalog is to help users compare and select requirements management tools as well as helping tool providers to direct future tool developments. 1.

Commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software tends to be cheap, reliable, and functionally powerful due to its large user base. It has thus become highly desirable to incorporate COTS software into software products (systems) as it can significantly reduce development cost and effort, while maintaining overall software product quality and increasing product acceptance. However, incorporating COTS software into software products introduces new complexities that developers are currently ill equipped to handle. Most significantly, while COTS software frequently contains programmatic interfaces that allow other software components to obtain services from them on a direct call basis, they usually lack the ability to initiate interactions with other components. This often leads to problems of state and/or data inconsistency. This paper presents a framework for integrating COTS software as proactive components within a software system that maintain the consistency of the state and data they share with other components. The framework utilizes a combination of low-level instrumentation and high-level reasoning to expose the relevant internal activities within a COTS component required to initiate the communication needed to maintain consistency with the other components with which it shares state and data. We will illustrate these capabilities through the integration of IBM's Rational Rose into a design suite and demonstrate how our framework solves the complex data synchronization problems that arise from this integration.

We present in this paper the language NoFun for stating component quality in the framework of the ISO/IEC quality standards. The language consists of three different parts. In the first one, software quality characteristics and attributes are defined, probably in a hierarchical manner. As part of this definition, abstract quality models can be formulated and further refined into more specialised ones. In the second part, values are assigned to component quality basic attributes. In the third one, quality requirements can be stated over components, both context-free (universal quality properties) and context-dependent (quality properties for a given framework-software domain, company, project, etc.). Last, we address to the translation of the language to UML, using its extension mechanisms for capturing the fundamental non-functional concepts. 1

When buying COTS-based software, the customer has to choose between what is available. The supplier may add some minor parts, but not everything the customer wants. This means that the customer cannot write down his requirements and expect that they can all be met. A scoring system is necessary rather than traditional mandatory requirements. Requirements for integrating the new COTS system with other systems are particularly hard because suppliers may integrate in different ways and with different other systems. A related problem is that once the new COTS system is purchased, the COTS supplier may have a de-facto monopoly. Only he can expand the system or integrate it with other systems. Experience shows that customers fail to deal with these issues adequately. As an example they may believe that asking for open interfaces is sufficient to guard them against monopoly. In this paper we analyze the problems and show ways to deal with them. We illustrate the problems and solutions with real-life examples from Electronic Patient Recording systems (EPR).

Abstract. This paper summarizes the main achievements of a research whose main goal was to investigate the current state-of-art in the field of requirements engineering for COTS-based systems. For this purpose, we have reviewed the most relevant contributions in this field over the last 10 years have been considered. After analyzing these research contributions, we defined a scenario composed by a number of punctual but relevant contributions and a number of methodological approaches coping with the requirements definitions for such systems. Finally, on the basis of this scenario, a Wish List of desirable features of a hypothetical approach has been defined and compared against the current situation. This list may act as an empirical means for evaluating new approaches addressing RE for COTS-based systems, and bases its foundations on the current needs pointed out by the major experts in this field. 1

Abstract. Ontologies are the core component in semantic Web applications. The employment of an ontology building method affects the quality of ontology and the applicability of ontology language. A weighted evaluation approach for ontology building guidelines is presented in this paper. The evaluation criteria are based on an existing classification scheme of a semiotic framework for evaluating the quality of conceptual models. Directions for further refinement of ontology building methods are discussed.

Employing Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) software products as components in large-scale long-lived systems has been proposed as a way to reduce both implementation and operating cost for the user communities. While this may be the case, the actual benefits have not been confirmed. However, there is factual evidence that some of the suggested cost savings will be offset by the need to address a new set of issues that are raised by the inclusion of COTS components. One of these is the need to evaluate candidates COTS systems early in the development life cycle. Our research is concentrated in the area of physical evaluation of candidate products, that is, actual testing of the products themselves.

Over the last few years, architecture description languages (ADLs) have become both progressively more expressive and widespread. While some ADLs have formally defined semantics, most are still informally specified. In this position paper we present an approach to modeling architecture description languages based on views. Our approach is based on partitioning and formalizing each semantically independent concept, or view, represented in an ADL. Along with the approach, we discuss three practical applications of our model, namely ADL comparison, architecture analysis, and component selection. Keywords: Architectural description languages (ADLs), architectural views, formal models, theory-model paradigm, object-oriented notations. 1 Introduction Within the software architecture community there has been significant emphasis on developing more expressive means of describing architectural designs. Much of the work has been focused on developing new architecture description languages (AD...

Developing countries (DCs) have yet to fully benefit from the many advances in the Information Technology (IT) field, mainly due to problems such as lack of resources and systems infrastructure. COTS-Based Systems (CBS) entail purchasing a number of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software components, each satisfying some part of the requirements of the system and integrating these components into the required system. CBS offers a number of benefits that the DCs can access, such as reducing development and maintenance costs. Therefore, CBS can be used to provide support for DCs to improve their IT processes.